Authors(s) and Affiliation(s)

Abstract

By using the case of China’s resettlement policy towards diasporic Chinese descendants expelled from Southeast Asia during 1949–1979 and examining their contemporary situation, this paper highlights the way scholarship on forced migration and ethnically privileged (return) migration can mutually enrich one another. The paper, first, examines the ge-opolitical context of Chinese forced migration and the premises of China’s preferential policy towards co-ethnics, which labelled the ‘refugees’ as ‘returnees’ intentionally. It argues that international migration histories are transitioning to new internal migration flows. Such migration succession trends may transform the ethnically privileged status of the farms and their inhabitants